Someday
by chezchuckles
Summary: Someday in the future, this is what will happen between them. COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

**Someday**

* * *

><p>I'll be yours<br>I'll be yours  
>I'll be yours<p>

Someday

-"Soon, My Friend," M83

* * *

><p>"Stop smiling at me like that," she murmurs.<p>

The bed is warm; she is light, filled with starlings that flutter.

The back of her fingers touch his lips, the warm-wet, the pliant. The smile tender and not enough. He parts his mouth to catch the pad of her thumb, teeth gentle, tongue touching the whorls of her skin.

Kate scoots closer across the sheets, its soft grey smooth at her shoulder, under her cheek. It's nothing and everything. He's still in jeans and a tshirt; she's in pajamas. It's nothing.

"Will you stay," she says. It's everything.

"Where would I go." He lifts his hand and drags his fingertips along the inside of her forearm until he crosses the border of her wrist, skis his index finger down the slope made by the heel of her palm, lands in the cradle of her curled hand.

No question. Just the chill moving outside the room and the warm light inside her chest, a halo down deep, touching all the broken places, smoothing them, releasing the birds of someday.

He slides his fingers through hers, knit together. She slides her thigh over his, tangled together. Everything about them speaks of woven lives; the strength in two cords unbroken. She may unravel; he will not. He holds her together until she can be stitched back up.

She hopes she can be the same for him. Not yet, but soon. A time is coming when he will be able to depend on her. When he will have words and a way through to her.

His hand, his long fingers and wide palm, everything squeezes around hers, drawing her back to the way the world drifts inside of her, the way it unfolds.

"I don't need any more than this," he says quietly.

The birds - the starlings - wheel in a ever-lightening sky, glossy against her dawn-soaked clouds; the _sort sol_ of their flocking gives way to glory inside her, bursts of it littering the air and climbing higher.

She wants to love him.

Kate slides closer, her lips pass their linked hands to skim the sharp line of his mouth, her cheek against his pillow.

She will tame the starlings, have them send messages across the sea of her psyche to reach him. Give him songs and calls, let them repeat the sound of her voice into his heart, one note at a time, let them remember her to him.

"Kate," he chides, curling her back to now, returning her home.

She leaves her lips against his cheek, sighs out so long that his other hand comes up to hesitantly curl around her shoulder. When she seeks closer, her thigh slides between his, her forehead rests against the strong tower of his throat.

His arm is a beam at her back, holding her in and up; his hand tangles loosely in her hair, his fingertips at her scalp.

"Say it again," she murmurs, letting her eyelids flicker open even though she can't see his face.

"I love you." The hand in her hair fists. "I love you."

Her heart breaks open to the sky. The feathers and the light, the wings illuminated like angels inside her.

"Don't cry," he laughs, uses their join hands between them to clumsily knock away the drop rolling down her nose.

"I'm not. I'm not." She's not.

"Again?"

"Yes."

"I love you."

* * *

><p>Curled around her in the darkness, his body is heavy enough to keep her inside, to keep her within the edges of her sanity. And yet her skin seems permeable; the words pass between them like osmosis, one to the other. His words sink into her and wander out her skin, passing back to him.<p>

"Again."

A rumble from somewhere behind her, a throat clearing. He was asleep. "You're not tired of it."

"Never."

"_Te amo_."

She sighs and kisses the center of his palm for that.

"I don't know French," he says.

"_Je t'aime_," she answers.

He laughs and brings his lips to her cheek, his voice traveling down into her through the doorway of her jaw. "Oh, really?"

She blinks in the darkness, but there is no panic, no flicker of warning lights, no self-destruct.

"_Volim te_," she uses next, turning in the bed to see him. What she can of him, a familiar shape in the dark room, this man in her bed, her body alert and ready but her heart not.

"Kate," he says, like he means to stop her. She puts her fingers to his lips, searches for purchase in the new landscape. The landscape of herself in light of him.

"_Ljubim te_."

"Sounds kinda the same."

"_Ti amo_."

"Spanish?"

"Italian."

"That all you know?"

She shakes her head. How is it that they are both still clothed and wrapped up in sheets in her bed and trading language back and forth like they are making love? Well, maybe they are, maybe this is the way she knows how. "It's all I know. But not the only language."

He reads that right, reads it carefully she sees, his fingers at her neck and brushing against the soft place behind her ear, so gentle. He reads it right. He gets it.

She has more. It's the easiest thing to pick up, the one that usually sticks. "_Aishiteru._"

"You made that up."

"Japanese."

She goes through Ukranian and then Russian for good measure. She hits Lebanese and Persian, Romanian, Polish, then Icelandic_ Eg elska tig _and rounds it out with Arabic. Various bits and pieces of languages she doesn't actually know fluently but collects like shiny things, easily and without even knowing she does it.

He doesn't ask for English. Doesn't ask for the names of what languages she's borrowing from, only watches her as she uses them to speak for her. To be her stand-in.

"Again," he says, his voice sleep-broken.

And she sails through them, one long litany of adoration that he can't possibly understand but does, he does, she knows he does.

She shifts between the languages, reforms her tongue against her teeth, the sounds sometimes in her throat, sometimes lighter and falling off her lips. He stops her with a kiss halfway through; he tastes like words.

* * *

><p>He sits in the floor, his back up against the side of her bed; Kate sits in the V of his legs so that his arms half circle her, his chest nearly against her spine, his chin at her shoulder, cheeks brushing. The warmth of him falls over her.<p>

She has taken off her mother's ring. She lets it slide through her fingers on its chain back down into the wooden box. It spins and catches the light before dropping.

"No more," she says.

He brushes a hand down her arm, kisses the skin at her neck where the fine hairs are, hums as he presses his lips into her.

Her body wakes and stirs.

"Again," she whispers. "Again for me."

"I love you."

She wants it to be everything.

They stay in the floor in front of the box; she wants it to be permanent, the shutting of the lid and closing off. It won't be the end of all of it because that's not what either of them wants or needs, but to be without the weight of it, to not carry it around every day, dragging at her. . .

That's the Kate who can tell him she loves him back. In his own language. Not hers.

She's finding as many ways as she can, the ways that are mostly foreign to him but which he somehow can translate. His love is a Rosetta stone, unlocking her cuneiform script with the cipher his provides. He can always tell what she means, and she doesn't know exactly how it's possible, how it's Castle - of all people - but he's the one.

This way, this morning here at the side of her bed with his body so close like a promise of someday, this way is a good way. Good enough for now.

Kate slides her palm over his jean-clad thigh, her fingers digging under his so that his hand rests on top of hers. She lifts their hands and their fingers mesh; Kate closes the lid of the box, letting his hand share the force, be the momentum behind her movement.

"Again-" Her throat closes up. She can't go past-

"You know I love you."


	2. Chapter 2

**Someday**

Chapter Two

* * *

><p>Those memories are no longer memories,<br>they're here, alive around me,  
>they dance and embrace me,<br>sing and smile at me.

I look down at my hands, I touch my face, I'm twenty years old,  
>and I love like I've never loved before.<p>

-translated from the French in "Echoes of Mine," M83  
>*thanks to Sandiane Carter*<p>

* * *

><p>Because she is making such an effort to bridge the distance, he is learning to speak her language. It doesn't take him long; the way he loves her is a lodestone that always points him to her north.<p>

To speak to her in her own language, he needs a preponderence of evidence and an accumulation of small details. There can be no odd sock, nothing amiss; it must be an airtight case.

Castle buys a whiteboard and a package of dry erase markers at the hardware store down the street instead of going back to the precinct. He calls her and tells her that he's outlining a story; he is. She tells him to take his time.

The white board is the biggest size that is not also on wheels (he wasn't sure of the logistics of wheeling that big a white board through the city, but if he has to, he will do it). He props this one up in the sofa in his office and takes a black marker to draw a timeline at the top. He uses a ruler to make it straight. This is her timeline; he writes _The Kate Beckett Continuum _just above it in red expo. At the the bottom of the landscaped white board, he draws a similar line and pens _The Evolution of Richard Castle_.

In the middle of her line, he bisects it with a hash mark, then writes to the left of the hash _The Man Who Makes This Harder._ On the right of the hash he pens _The Man Who Makes This Easier. _He bisects his own line a little differently, with two-thirds of the timeline still to his right, and scrawls to the left _An Extraordinary Muse _and then to the right _It's Not About the Books Anymore_.

At the beginning of her timeline, he writes the day he met her and the interrogation room with its number. Then on his timeline, he marks the same day but writes _Our First Date._

He plots his points fairly easily: the times he saved her life, the times she saved his, the moment he looked at her differently, her apartment blowing up, the confessions she inadvertently gave him (big fan of his work, etc.), the times he wanted to kiss her crowding out nearly the whole left half. He uses the green dry erase marker to pinpoint their undercover kiss (_first kiss_) and then he marks the day she was shot and lying in the green grass and he told her the first time (_twice_). He hesitates over the next one, because it's a lot more than she might want to know, it's almost more than he wants to give out, but he makes a blue hash mark after the first summer apart from her (when he approached her about re-opening her mother's case) and writes a novel under that dash:

_I Fell in Love With the Woman Who Expected More From Me But Forgave Me Anyway_

He wants it to be more; he wants it to be an apology for ever opening it back up again. He wants to somehow acknowledge that it's his own damn fault she's stuck back in this hole, and in being stuck, she's also not able to be his, but-

He can't be sorry for that moment, for the way his heart fell out of his chest and flopped on the floor when she let him back in. He can't apologize for that.

He marks yesterday, then leaves the whole rest of the right side mostly clear. He uses blue to make two more dots. One says _The Day You Say It Back_ and the next one says _Someday_. At the very end of the timeline (which doesn't really end, only runs off the board), he writes the (hopefully her) vital statistics: _This is Always: 2.5* kids, our own place, you laugh at all of my jokes, the world is a shared burden, partners._ He makes a footnote for the asterisk: _Alexis, of course, is the half._

He's being both sentimental and ridiculous, precise and abstract. This is what she needs, what he probably needs as well, a roadmap to their relationship. Goals to be met. An end game in mind.

Castle stands up and stretches the cramped muscles in his back, studying her mostly blank timeline above his. He decides to make outlandish guesses, to keep her in humor and to make it lighter than it is.

He marks some of the same shared events, puts a teasing note in his descriptions, but manages to remind himself (and hopefully her when she sees this) of all the many ways she's already said it: _I'd get you out; Always; How are you? _

He puts down relationship marks in blue next. The things he wants to do to her. With her. Together. He's got first kiss and second, and there are maybe a handful more before he stopped counting. Then he marks three or four others: _make love to you _and _surprise you in the shower (or bath, your choice)_ and then _when I marry you _and _when you answer me._

Scattered around these suggestions, he writes _hold your hand in Central Park _and _kiss you in the break room in front of anyone who cares to see. _He debates a few others but writes down all the things, all of them, that want out, in no real order as they range across the board. Things that should come in order, but probably won't with them. When he can finally take her out on a real first date, when they talk about kids, when they move in together, when she comes home to him, when she gives him a key to her place, when they get married, when he watches her undress, when she clears out space in her closet and bathroom for him, when they shop for engagement rings, when he starts making her pick out his tie for charity events, when her mother's case is solved, when she appears in page 6 linked to him and smiling about it, when they pick out china patterns.

Somewhere floating above this, not on the timeline, he makes a dash, a free-floating plotpoint, and writes:

_When you say it back to me._

* * *

><p>Castle wraps the white board in Christmas paper - it's all he's got that's big enough - and then affixes an index card to the front for lack of clever greeting cards or to and from labels. The index card is bright pink and from a package of multi-colored cards he used (at one time) to plan out the murders for his books.<p>

He scribbles her name on the front, flips it over, then writes her favorite three words on the back.

Castle leaves it outside her apartment door while she's at the 12th, then heads for coffee, texting her as he goes.

She says she needs a break, and he's already paying for the coffee, feeling the rush of his blood as he thinks of her. At the counter when they hand it over, he takes the sleeve off her cup and uses a black sharpie from his pocket to write the words inside it too. She'll probably never see it, but he writes them anyway.

When he gets to the 12th, she's waiting on him outside in her coat. She takes the cup and redirects him to the narrow lot between the buildings where she must have snagged a good parking spot.

"Where are we going?" he asks.

Another body drop or suspects to interview or maybe a neighborhood canvas. It's early yet in the investigation.

Kate is behind him, and she herds him further into the parking lot, but he doesn't see her Crown Vic. He turns to say something, but she's taking a long gulp of her coffee, and then she presses the back of her hand against her mouth.

"Stop right there for a second," she murmurs around her hand.

He sees the flicker in her eyes the moment before she leans in and thoroughly investigates his mouth, on the job as always.

Castle steps closer and wraps his fingers at her hip, holding her in and close, his cup of coffee in the hand at her back.

When they break away, she smiles at him.

"You taste like coffee," he says, inane through and through, struck silly by the press of her mouth.

"You taste like writing. Good morning for it?"

"You are my good morning," he says instead, mixed up but meaning it.

She laughs and kisses him quickly; now she tastes like laughter. "Have a few people to check out today. Car is down the block. You coming?"

"Of course."

She slides her hand down to his and takes it, coffee cradled against her chest where her scar is but the ring is not. She looks pensive and pleased at the same time.

* * *

><p>She doesn't say a word about the white board he left for her, but the next week when he finally makes it back into her apartment, he sees it propped up in a dining room chair.<p>

Kate's already heading back to her room to change out of her work clothes, but he's drawn immediately to the board. She must know he can't resist it.

She's rearranged some of the plot points on her timeline. Instead of the hash mark being in the middle, delineating the continuum of her tolerance for him, she's moved it way back to the beginning, somewhere around their third case together.

And about the place he put _Come to the Hamptons with me_ she's written in red marker _Yes._

But she never said yes. Immediately after this, she's scribbled through the timeline with the marker, making it choppy with white space (where the marker runs over marker, it erases), almost as if she were disconnecting. From him. That's the summer he spent with Gina writing the book. Then she's written, in black block letters: _because he was not you._

He? Who-? Oh.

So then. Even Josh was a way she was trying to say it; a mixed up and painful way, but still. He'll take it. Now. An expression of love.

She's written it in all the languages she spoke to him; little red dots of foreign certainty. About the same place where he marked the summer she was shot, she's scripted: _I remember everything._

Which is the closest she's come yet.

On his own timeline, he notices subtle differences as well. Notes that she's made to his own statements: _The work of forgiving was the hardest I've ever done, but I did it because I wanted so very badly to keep you. _She's circled both _bath_ and _shower_ as options; under the line about charity events, she's penned _land the white whale_ which he doesn't understand. Then there's _Never_ after his _laugh at all my jokes_ (in it's own way, _Never_ is a promise as well).

It takes him a moment to see it, but he finally notices that she's smudged on the _Someday_ a little bit, as if she took her nail and scratched at it. Underneath that she's written in red:

_If I could make it today, I would. Help me start._


	3. Chapter 3

**Someday**

Chapter 3

* * *

><p>I take your hand, and the city is slowly vanishing.<br>There's no crowd anymore, no cars, no signals.  
>But in the middle of the road, a purple and mellow shape is floating.<br>The shape of our mutual dream.  
>Stay calm, hold me tight, give it a chance to take us away.<p>

We will live, we will dream on the shadow of our world.

-"OK Pal," M83

* * *

><p>Castle startles when her body presses against his back. Her mouth on his shoulder blade, hands sliding around his ribs, and it's Kate warm and strong behind him. He captures those hands and put his lips on them.<p>

"I like it," she murmurs into his back, then tilts her head and lays her cheek against him.

"Yeah?"

"Did you see what I marked?"

"You marked a lot of it," he chuckles, wanting to turn around but wanting more the drape of her on his back, the vibration of her voice against him.

"One of those suggestions has today's date," she says, now sliding around his body to stand between him and the whiteboard, looking both coy and eager at the same time.

He wriggles his eyebrows at her, and she laughs, her thumb darting up to brush along the sweep of his eyebrow, as if to touch his amusement.

When he looks past her to the white board, both their timelines dotted in red and green and blue and black, he scans it quickly, tries to see-

Kate nudges him, nods her head, and he sees she's written today's date under _hold your hand in Central Park._

"Yeah?"

She laughs again and lifts up on her toes even though she's already so tall; she can reach him easily and, honestly, he would bend down the rest of the way if she wanted him closer. He would walk with a hunched back if he thought she had something to say. Anything she had to say.

"We already did, Castle."

They already did? "Today?"

"The cut-through as we-"

"Oh, that doesn't count," he huffs, wrapping both arms around her now and squeezing. "You grabbed my hand for two seconds so I wouldn't get run over by a biker."

"I still don't know how you couldn't see the guy approaching-"

"I was too busy watching you," he mutters.

She laughs again (_again_, again is a beautiful word), and then she presses her mouth to his jaw, hums before she says, "Well, that's too bad. You missed our first holding hands."

"Not the first," he says backs, lifitng his hand from her waist to take hers, the same grasp as a hundred other times, mimicking an afternoon at a bank or a late night beside a pool.

She twists her hand and snags his fingers with hers, kissing his knuckles, then his wrist, then the inside of his wrist. She presses her mouth to his palm and seals the spot together with their clapsed hands. She brings their hands against her chest, breathing slowly.

"Again?" she asks.

He doesn't hesitate. "I love you, Kate."

Her face breaks with joy, spilling it out everywhere so that he can't help but be caught in it too.

"I'm ready for Central Park, Castle," she says, tugging on his hand and stepping back, pulling him towards the door.

He notices she's in jeans now, and sneakers; her hair is loose where it was scraped back all day today. She's wearing a hooded, zipped sweatshirt and a grey shirt; she's taking him with her.

"Okay," he says finally, shaking his head at her, bemused. He tries to expect nothing, but he's expecting everything.

"Not just Central Park. I'm ready for the break room," she adds, giving him an arch look as she opens her door.

"You are not," he says back, eyes narrowing.

"I am too."

"Are not. There's no way."

"With the blinds down and the door shut."

"Wimp."

"Definitely." But she's still smiling at him, amused at herself. She tugs him over the threshold and locks her door behind them, stuffs her keys into her pocket. "And if tomorrow goes like I'm afraid it will-"

"Oh?"

She brushes it aside with a flick of her hand, but it's both their hands now, together, and she laughs, bites her lip.

"Have to get used to this," she says.

"The case isn't-"

"It'll be drudge work. Ryan's got video surveillance and Esposito will have to dig through some trash. They'll be in foul moods."

"You're making it sound so glamorous. Again, why am I coming in?"

"Because I'll be there," she adds, sounding convinced. As she should be.

He wants to say it again, but that's not the deal. He wants to say it more than she can stand, all the time, forever. The words want out in her hallway so badly that he has to grab her tightly and squeeze, just to relieve the ache in his chest.

She hugs him back, their hands still clutched together between them, her mouth on his cheekbone, the ridge of his eyebrow, the dark shadow beside his nose. He feels her feathering kisses until she meets his lips, lingers.

She is giving him time to calm down, time for this to be enough. It is enough. It can be. Ask me, he thinks, ask me-

She breaks for a moment, her forehead against him. "Say it. You can say it."

"Hush."

Kate breathes out a frustrated sigh. "I can see it all over your face, Castle. Say it."

But she hasn't said her safe word. She hasn't given him permission, and he waits. He will wait.

"No rush, Kate. It's in everything else." He manages to get at her mouth again, takes what she has left, takes more, feels her knees against his, the pulse of her heart in her lips.

When they draw back, she is watching him, her eyes serious. "Let's make Central Park official. Then tomorrow the break room-"

"Leave tomorrow alone," he says. He brushes his hands over her hair, sleek and soft, drags his thumbs down her jaw and then up along the lines at her mouth, tugging her lips into a smile of his own making.

She rolls her eyes but laughs again, an escape of air, stepping away so they can make it down the stairs to her building's front door. Her hand in his, leading him down. At the bottom, she eyes him, studies him, their hands linked.

"Say it again, Castle. Say it because you want to."

It rushes over him like it did in the hallway, a ripe tide that drags him out. He kisses her first, hard, his mouth breaking hers open, starfish to a clam, seeking pearls. She clutches at him, rides the wave of his need until he's left trembling at the shoreline.

"Kate, I love you. Stay with me, stay with me," he murmurs, because she is alive. She is. And still, she could leave.

"I'm here. Come with me to Central Park. We'll hold hands the whole way, Castle. This I can do."

She offers him a sweet taste of her mouth, fingers brushing his neck, and then opens the front door of her building.

Because their fingers are still laced together, he gets pulled out after her, a kite on her string.


	4. Chapter 4

**Someday**

Chapter Four

* * *

><p>We didn't need a story, we didn't need a real world<br>We just had to keep walking.

And we became the stories, we became the places  
>We were the lights, the deserts, the faraway worlds.<p>

-"Intro" M83

* * *

><p>"You gotta stop smiling at me like that," he says.<p>

The trail is damp with today's rain; the trunks of trees are saturated with color. Everything drips and shines.

Kate moves closer to him, not just their hands entwined, but pressed arm to arm, wrist to wrist, her nose in the warm cloth at his shoulder so that she can cradle his arm against her body. That close.

She hides her mouth against him, breathing in the decay of wet, fall leaves and the warm, day-long wear of his shirt.

"Even though I can't see it, I can still tell it's there," he laughs, bringing his other hand up to sift through her hair, his thumb at her neck. "That smile. You smile at me like that all the time now. I know what it means."

The radiance is reflected in his voice, how he feels about her, how he wants her, how he waits for her.

Rick Castle - the most patient man in the world. The Boy Who Waited.

Kate laughs into his shoulder and his fingers skim her scalp, brush her hair back. "What's that about?"

She turns her head to kiss the wrist near her lips, filled with light. "Funny thought."

"Yeah? Wanna share with the class?"

"I'm happy," she says softly, surprised by it. She was going to mention the Doctor Who reference her brain turned up, but instead-

This.

She is happy.

He halts in the middle of the path, his face so very still with stunned disbelief that she can't breathe. The western sunlight eases just over his shoulder, dappling his face with leaf-shadows and limning him with a golden glow. Or maybe it's the way her happiness has coated everything inside her like a mirror, or the moon, reflected glory.

"I make you happy," he breathes, cupping her face with his hand, smoothing his thumb across her lips. A caress, a brush of liquid gold.

"Yeah, you." And even though the honesty feels awkward in her mouth, this is their deal. He tells her he loves her and she tells him the truth, whatever it might be. This is the truth today. Holding hands with Castle makes her happy. "You."

He leans in and sneaks a kiss from her mouth, grinning against her lips as he does. She smiles into it, bites her bottom lip only to have him tug it back out with his thumb, nuzzling her nose with his. She can feel the soft whisper of his lids closing at her cheek, the trail of his lips to the corner of her mouth, his body releasing warmth between them, radiated.

"I want to do so much," she sighs, feeling his mouth work against her. Her hands fist in his shirt. She doesn't want to tease, but she wants more than the heat of his eyes on her.

"Give it time."

"I want it now. I don't want to be. . .this anymore. I want to be more than this."

"This is who I fell in love with."

Her chest squeezes. "Exactly," she murmurs, her eyes drifting to the rustling trees. "What if, by the time I figure out how to be who I am without all this baggage, without all these definitions, what if that's not who you love?"

"The you doesn't change. More is just better. More is just picking a new path, setting your face towards the light, rather than darkness. I don't love your darkness, Kate. I love you in spite of it."

She shivers, has to swallow hard. A love without conditions. "Sometimes, when we're talking, I find myself memorizing your words. They come back to me when I'm alone, and in the dark. They come back like love."

He chokes and presses his cheek to hers, arms so tight around her she can barely breathe. "Oh, Kate. Take all you need. I've written novels for you. I could write a thousand more and never say enough."

She believes him. Oh help, she believes him. All his novels, Nikki and Rook, the way she can step into his embrace with every chapter-

"Take me in the Castle," she says, crowding closer to him on the path. "Before the sun sets."

"Do what-?"

_Oh_. She closes her eyes against the heat flooding her body.

"I meant. Not that - though that's not unappealing - oh jeez. I meant the Belvedere Castle. Take me there. Nikki's Castle."

When she opens her eyes, his face is gilded by the setting sun, his lashes sparkling white, his face creased into a brilliant and madly charming grin. Kate slides her palms against his jaw, lets her fingers be abraded by his five o'clock shadow, darts forward to nibble at the sharp corner of his chin. A promise of later. She doesn't know when, but-

He growls and clears his throat. "All right. The Castle."

She nods, turns to take the path on her left that will take them back around-

"Kate." His fingers wrap around her wrist, tug her back. "Hold my hand. We need to choose a new path."

"No, this one-"

"Kate. A new path."

She blinks at him slowly, the low slant of sunlight illuminating the air between them, the particles on her lashes. She takes a step back towards him until their hands are no longer stretched, until they are side by side.

"You lead the way then, Castle."

She understands.

She is so close. So very close.

But miles to go before she sleeps.

* * *

><p>They arrive faster than she expected. They appear right behind the tower of Belvedere Castle, stepping from wooded seclusion to iconic Central Park with the smallest of distances. They maneuver around other visitors, tourists, art students sketching even in the fading light.<p>

At the top of the tower, she can see the parapets below, and then the park spread before them, the treeline of branches shedding their leaves, the pond rippling and green-grey, the sunset licking the horizon with cold yellows and blushed pinks.

She turns to him, their hands clasped loosely together. It's strange how his fingers feel a part of her skin, an extension of her hand, the pulse of blood through his fingers echoed by her own.

Her ring finger is going numb, squeezed tight between his broad fingers, thick and long and wide. His fingers keep hers slightly out of joint; he makes her stretch.

But she likes it, likes feeling it. She grins and nudges his hip. "Castle in a Castle."

He gives a false laugh. "Ho-ho. And you? A fortress inside a fortress."

She rolls her eyes, but leans her head against his shoulder. Trying to be less of a fortress. "I'm taking a different path, remember?" she half-jokes, feels him turn and clasp his hands low at her waist, kiss her cheek. She misses the warmth of his hand, but she flexes her fingers and leans away to look at his face in the last of the light. "So. First step. We crossed this one off the timeline."

"You liked the white board, huh?" he grins at her, rubbing a hand up and down her back.

"Yeah, but-"

He pouts. "But what?"

"Our timelines are parallel. I want them to converge," she murmurs, watching him fall mesmerized by her.

After a gaping moment, and then a quick shake of her head that makes her grin, he says:

"They are, Kate."

She lifts her eyes to his, feels her mouth spreading into a smile she can't help, can't stop, powerless to the way he fills her. Making love to this man will be. . .she can't comprehend it. She wants it. She wants it and she can't imagine it.

"The sunset on your hair," he sighs, his hands lifting the waves from her face. "The light spilling around you."

"Say it again," she says suddenly, needing to ease the ache in her chest that tightens whenever her heart betrays her.

He groans and leans his forehead to hers. "Oh so much, Kate. I love you. Too much."

It works. She can breathe; her hands cradle his head. His arms tighten around her. Too much. He loves her too much.

Can he survive her? Survive her remodel, her knocking down walls? She never thought to wonder before. She wants to do this right, doesn't want to torture him. She just doesn't know how to bring herself in close while the demolition is going on.

When she opens her eyes, the castle walls are blurred and indistinct with twilight. Her body shivers in the whisper of wind that penetrates the turret.

"We're losing the light," he murmurs, shadows already clinging to his face as he pulls back from her. "We should go."

No. No, she doesn't want to. She wants to be more. Right now. She wants him, wants to be free to have him. She sucks in a long breath, closes her eyes so she doesn't have to see the darkness closing in around them.

But it's dark behind her eyelids as well. Not just dark, but darker. With scattered visions that haunt her.

"Open your eyes, Kate. It's okay. We're okay."

She does, sees him spilling with love. She lifts her hand and brushes the hair back from his forehead, her fingers drifting along his hairline, her heart caught out by unruly bangs. "You know. Don't you. You know."

"Yes. Of course I do. I'm sure of you."

Well that makes one of them.

"Don't get me wrong, Kate. I like the well-wrought phrase. But I like the story more. And everything you do tells the story."

She watches the determination line his face, illuminate his eyes. Her chest fills with splendor, fills the dark places. "The story," she murmurs.

"The story of your love," he says simply. "The story of us."

"Yes." She hooks her arm around his neck and draws in, her lips against his ear. "You write the story of us, Castle."

"I already have. It's all over the white board. Didn't you read it?"

Kate laughs against his jaw, feels his palms slide over her hips, tuck into her back pockets. She sucks in a breath, pleased with his confidence even in the face of her balk. She grins: when the pitcher balks, the runner gets to advance. Castle has no trouble advancing.

He squeezes and chuckles against her temple when her hips rise to meet his.

She licks her lip, tries to gather the thread of their conversation. "You make our story sound so dirty, Castle."

"I've never tried erotica before. Want me too? I can do that with you."

"Mm," she grins, burying her smile in the darkness at his jaw. She can't help biting his skin, the growth of stubble on his face.

"That sounded like a yes. Felt like a yes."

"Nearly was."

"Was? Sigh."

She laughs, tries so very hard not to encourage him. "So what do you see from your Castle? What do you see that everyone else doesn't?" She means in life, in general; she means only to distract herself from the way his hands knead at her backside.

"I see you, don't I? I saw you first from here."

"You saw me," she says slowly, but it's true. "You know when I first met you, I thought you were arrogant. That you didn't even care that people were dying. But you were playing a part. Why did you do that? Pretend to be so shallow, to be a playboy."

"Kate," he laughs gently. "That *was* the real me. Police horse naked, remember?"

She smiles, but she shakes her head. "No, it wasn't you. I saw you too, Castle. From my fortress up here." She leans back to look at him; he's gone quiet and still. "Even then, I could see the kind of father you are; I could see how you care about people being heard, getting treated fairly. I could see how deeply you love what's yours. I see the real you."

"You do," he murmurs back, nudging her cheek with his nose. He presses a soft kiss to the beauty mark under her eye. "Back then it was barely a speck, almost nothing. You saw that in me, Kate. You made me better."

The sun has gone. The tower is filled with dark shadows, but his body is warm around hers. "I don't believe it," she says. "This was you all along. Only now, you've stopped pretending, stopped putting on the act."

"Maybe that's true," he says on a sigh. "If it is, I've been pretending for all of my life. Only now have I found someone I don't have to pretend with."

_Yes._

Yes, this.

She is a strong cord winding around him. Together they remain unbroken, even with the frayed edges, the weak spots. He doesn't have to pretend with her; she can be at rest with him.

Kate closes her eyes and says the only thing that banishes the darkness, within and without. For him. Because it's time for him to stop waiting.

"Castle."

"I'm here."

"I love you."


End file.
